Why would you hold self-driving cars to a standard that we don’t hold drivers? If you are a driver and realize you are about to harm a pedestrian, there is no circumstance when the law suggests you ram a car into a building or pole instead of the pedestrian. Your insurance would rather you hit the pedestrian, usually. Because in an animal strike, hitting the animal is comprehensive (in America) and swerving to hit a fence is collision. You can’t be at fault for comprehensive. A pedestrian is a different mater and not comprehensive, but they’d rather you mitigate liability, and then mitigate cost. And there’s a chance the pedestrian was at fault, at least partially. The building/pole can’t be.
But all of this is a moot point. Self-driving cars will NEVER be programmed to harm the driver before an outside person. Simply for the fact no one will ever buy or ride in a car that chooses to kill the passenger over others. No one will ride in the Suicide Car.
Exactly. I too think that human driven cars should also have a self destructing mechanism.
However we, as a society, should agree to only use said mechanism for good.
However we, as a society, should agree to only use said mechanism for good.
And the safest way to use it is to not have cars. Does !fuckcars@lemmy.world not get that?
Not OP, not agreeing/disagreeing with them.
Self-driving cars should absolutely be held to a higher standard than humans. They are not humans and cannot be held accountable for their actions, therefore the benefits of their use over human drivers should be overwhelming before we allow them in the streets.
As for the trolley-esque problem being discussed, it’s actually an incredibly complicated problem with even more complicated solutions. A statement like, “hit a wall instead of a person”, seems obvious to a human but just adds a million complications to the situation. How do you detect if it’s a safe wall to hit? What if it’s a fence on a schoolyard with 30 children sitting on the other side.
